James Ferguson

Bio

James R. Ferguson is an Associate Professor of Mechanical & Biomedical Engineering at Boise State University. His field of research is heat transfer and fluid mechanics, particularly internal flow heat transfer. Prof. Ferguson has had 12 years of industrial experience prior to his appointment at Boise State University in 1996. Ten of those years were at ABB Power Generation in Switzerland where he worked on gas turbine cooling problems. At Boise State University he has supervised undergraduates and graduate students in research projects resulting in award winning ASME Regional Old Guard Oral and Poster presentations. In addition, he has placed Boise State engineering students as interns with ABB or Alstom since his appointment. He is currently supervising two masters level projects involving inverse methods in heat transfer and mixed convection cooling.

Courses Taught

• ME 330 Fluid Mechanics
• ME 420 Thermodynamics II
• ME 424 Thermal and Fluids System Design

Education

• Bachelor of Science degree from Santa Clara University in 1977
• Master of Science from Cornell University in 1980
• Doctoral degree from Washington State University in 1986

Selected Publications:

• Poser, R., J.R. Ferguson, and J. von Wolfersdorf, “Temporal signal preprocessing and evaluation of thermochromic liquid crystal indications in transient heat transfer experiments”, 8th European Turbomachinery Conference, Graz, Austria, March 2009.
• Ferguson, J.R., “Simultaneous thermochromic liquid crystal calibration and calculation of heat transfer coefficients” Paper GT2007-28124, ASME Turbo Expo 2007, Montreal Canada, May, 2007.
• Froerer, Dathan, and James R. Ferguson, “Transient Testing to Determine Heat Transfer Coefficient and Wall Thickness of Turbine Blades”, Paper IMECE2004-60247, 2004 ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and R&D Expo, Anaheim, Calif., November, 2004.
• Ferguson, J.R. and D.E. Stock, ” ‘Heavy’ particle dispersion measurements with mono- and polydisperse particle size distributions.”, ASME Journal of Fluids Engineering 115, 3, 523-526, 1993.
• Weigand, B., J.R. Ferguson and M.E. Crawford, “An extended Kays and Crawford turbulent Prandtl number model”, Int. J. Heat Mass Transfer 40, 17, 4191-4196, 1997.
• Weigand, B., B. Bonhoff and J.R. Ferguson, “A comparative study between 2D boundary layer predictions and 3D Navier-Stokes calculations for a film cooled vane”, ASME Proceedings of the 32nd National Heat Transfer Conference 12, 213-222, 1997.
• Ferguson, J.R., J.M. Fiard and R. Herbin, “Three-dimensional numerical simulation for various geometries of solid oxide fuel cells” , J. Power Sources 58, 109-122, 1996.
• Bernier, M., J. R. Ferguson, and R. Herbin, “A 3-dimensional planar SOFC stack model,” in Proceedings of the Third European Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Forum, 1998.